Quote of the Week...from Harry Callahan

A man's got to know his limitations.                  
                                                          ---Harry "Dirty Harry" Callahan, as portrayed by Clint Eastwood.

Not exactly the most likeable character in the history of film...yet adored by millions...the gruff, no-nonsense San Francisco homicide inspector Harry Callahan, played by Clint Eastwood in his "Dirty Harry" series,  has said a few famous one-liners: the above quote, taken from Magnum Force, is my favorite.  It's also the final line spoken in it, in one of the most satisfying closing moments in my moviegoing experience.  Whether you're in the police, athletics, the arts...or just engaging in some work around the home...it's crucial to be aware of what you can and cannot do.  It doesn't mean you are incapable of learning new things, but if you're confronted with a task or challenge you're not up to, then you're better off letting it go or finding someone else to help you with it.  Also, just because somebody's real good in one area or the "alpha dog" leader in a group, formally or informally, that doesn't automatically make them an all-encompassing, wise guru on everything that comes up, and it irritates me to no end whenever a star athlete or entertainer gets full of their own importance and expects me to agree with their opinions outside the scope of their expertise simply on the strength of their fame or popularity: sure, I'll hear what they have to say but their star value means nothing as to their arguments' merits...

In a time when we are being bombarded by messages about how we can do anything with our lives, it's important to recognize that we also are ultimately limited in our choices if what we are seeking is fame and recognition from others.  Better to pick areas that we enjoy and find rewarding for their own sake...and let what comes from others' reactions be their business and not be concerned about it.  Sometimes those goals of fame and fortune can be limiting...how many celebrities, once they get to where they've been struggling for so long and so hard, then turn about-face on it all and try to shut out the world?  Go figure.  And we all know people, going back throughout our years even into childhood, who had special talents and accomplishments (as well as special training and teaching that we weren't provided) that may have caused us to feel diminished about our own lives in comparison.  The solution: don't compare yourself to others like this, and instead rejoice in their success...that's maturity, something a lot of us never get around to attaining, but which is also something that shouldn't be beyond anyone's limitations...

Tropical Storm Isaias Headed Our Way This Weekend

Tropical Storm Isaias (pronounced ee-sa-EE-yas) is headed our way this weekend...if you happen to be living on the Florida peninsula, that is.  Not expected at the current time to strengthen to hurricane intensity, it is speeding along at a fast clip (20 mph), at this writing on Thursday morning about to cross the mountainous region of the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles from the Caribbean Sea and then through the Bahamas.  The projected tracks have its center passing just to the east of Florida and ending up somewhere along the Georgia/Carolinas coastline. Isaias is asymmetrical with the bulk of its stormy areas lying to its east...as it passes on into the open Atlantic this area will be largely unaffected by the Hispaniola crossing.  The models have it passing just east of Miami by Saturday afternoon and then past northern Florida on Sunday, its maximum sustained winds projected by then to be at 70 mph, just beneath hurricane strength.  The ultimate course of Isaias will depend on a trough in the U.S.: how strong it remains and where it goes will steer the tropical storm as it advances.  Not too serious looking right now, but I'd definitely keep my eyes on Isaias if I lived anywhere near its path (which I happen to do), especially along the eastern coastline...just a little shift to the west and more strengthening than expected could affect us in Florida more severely...

Weekly Short Stories: 1961 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here are my reviews of three more science fiction short stories from 1961, as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 23 (1961).  They were all pretty thought-provoking, although I wasn't too keen on the first one below.  But I still think even that one is pretty good reading...I'd welcome your reaction should you decide to tackle it...

DEATH AND THE SENATOR by Arthur C. Clarke
I remember reading this story fifteen years ago while with my son Will, waiting at the Orlando International Airport for the return of Melissa and my daughter Rebecca from her school trip to Washington, DC...after a second run-through I still disagree with the author's conclusions.  A powerful politician has neglected his family over the years in favor of ambition, but now discovers he has a terminal heart condition.  But relief is offered from a source he had campaigned as a senator to cut from funding: an orbiting zero-gravity station shown to be therapeutic and run by the Soviets.  The ending, to which I strongly objected, implied that one's patterns of behavior are so strong in their lives that it would be preferable to just go ahead and die, since it would be fruitless to actually try to change...

THE QUAKER CANNON by Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth
In a war implicitly between the West and the Russians (called "yutes") taking place way off into the future, in the 1980s that is, an American officer, who had been earlier captured, subjected to torture and interrogation...and subsequently talked, is given another chance as the personal aide to the general responsible for the upcoming major attack against the enemy.  He is informed of a major ruse in their strategy: like Patton's phony army in World War II, another fake force is being assembled to make the yutes mobilize against them instead of the true invasion group.  How this story ends is pretty brilliant...

THE MOON MOTH by Jack Vance
Vance posits the argument that when a society becomes self-sufficient and comfortable, then it will retreat into an intricate system of rituals and rules, stratifying everyone's role within it while being sharply opposed to anything innovative or different.  As a consular representative of the "federation" to such a world, the protagonist finds himself caught up in a web of "musts" and taboos, having to wear a mask...not any mask, but the exact, appropriate one...while speaking to others in a completely roundabout manner to the accompaniment of any of a number of specifically-applicable native musical instruments.  He is suddenly given an assignment to catch a dangerous assassin who had just landed there...and tries to plow through the entrenched, extremely individualistic social system to stop his foe.  A very satisfactory ending with all the story's pieces falling together nicely. By the way, I'm starting to notice our own masks of today's coronavirus world becoming more stylized to reflect their wearers' sense of identity: watch out...

Next week I conclude my look back at the year 1961 in short science fiction...

COVID-19 Outbreak with Marlins Calls into Question Baseball's Strategy

I'm not sure how this is all going to eventually "play" out, but after reading my computer's newsfeed yesterday morning on which it was revealed that after only three games fourteen Miami Marlins players and staff had tested positive for COVID-19...later revised to thirteen...it looks as if Major League Baseball is in for a rough couple of weeks ahead as games are being postponed and the league's non-bubble strategy of playing at home ball parks...with players and staff able to be with their families...is being placed under increasing scrutiny.  By contrast, Major League Soccer has played according to the isolated bubble format...no problems at all so far with any coronavirus contamination, and they've already played their three-match group stage and are now in the midst of the sixteen-team knockout round.  The soccer format not only isolates the players and staff but also limits the total amount of games, with the number of participants set to halve with each proceeding round.  Likewise, with the National Basketball Association pursuing a similar bubble strategy as they try to close out the 2019-20 season and resume play in a couple of days, they should be better prepared than baseball to avoid mass infections.  But the upcoming National Football League and college seasons are now clearly in jeopardy...not so much because of the in-game contact between players but rather because of the players' greater exposure to the outside world between games.  It's not working for baseball, which plans to play a sixty-game regular season...should be interesting to see where they go from here and if the threat can still be reasonably contained to continue on with play: I still remember the NBA season being abruptly stopped after just ONE player tested positive...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #60-56

The five songs on this segment of my list of 500 all-time favorite songs are all pretty old, the most recent one from 28 years ago.  Four of them you probably have heard before, the other being the first one listed below.  After thinking about each of them, it occurred to me that they're all pretty introspective, thoughtful pieces with memorable melodies and compelling instrumental arrangements: I think you'll like them, too...

60 LAZY DAY...the Moody Blues
One of my all-time favorite album sides...when they used to exist before the advent of the compact disc...is Side Two of the Moody Blues' 1969 On the Threshold of a Dream.  Lazy Day is the second track, but all the songs are wonderful...and they smoothly transition one into the next.  There is something very "English" about this song, and something subtly sinister about it as well, although the lyrics seem perfectly innocent describing life in a small town.  It was one of the many great compositions and performances I love by bandmember Ray Thomas...he's got a couple of higher-ranked songs on this list of mine...

59 NOT ENOUGH TIME...INXS
Not Enough Time, from 1992, to me was the final great song from the wildly talented and creative Australian band INXS.  It is one of their slower pieces, with the lyrics very romantic and passionate and the music dreamy.  I thought INXS would be around for a long time, but their popularity and music began to decline as the 1990s wore on, and then the tragic death of singer Michael Hutchence was devastating.  But I still have their backlog of great works to listen to...

58 LONELY PEOPLE...America
This is a real inspirational, uplifting song designed to help anyone listening who is suffering from discouragement and despondency.  It came out in early 1975, during a time in which I was having a lot of conflicting thoughts about society and my future place in it.  Great lyrics..."This is for all the lonely people thinking that life has passed them by, don't give up until you drink from the silver cup and ride that highway in the sky".  During their popularity in the seventies I had something of a love-hate relationship with this band: most of their stuff I could do without but then they'd come up with a song like this treasure...

57 BLACKBIRD...the Beatles
Originally I didn't even know the Beatles had written and originally recorded Blackbird...my first exposure to this song was through a cover version from a Latin band with a female lead singer...I think it was Bossa Rio.  But Paul McCartney's recording is easily superior and I've always considered it to be one of the best songs from their 1968 self-titled "White Album".  It's a great acoustic guitar piece...with a lot of little chirpy bird sounds: I'll have to compile a list someday of songs with birds and other animals in the background...

56 CHANGES...David Bowie
Changes was initially a popular singles hit in the U.S. in 1971...in South Florida where I was a 15-year old at the time, though, only WSRF/1580 in Fort Lauderdale would play it.  Fast forward four years to March of '75...now WQAM/560 for some reason had it in their regular rotation and I associate it with that time as well, including a 14.5 mile run I did one afternoon while humming this song to myself.  But regardless when it was popular or what I associate it with, Changes stands well on its own and contains some good, poetic wisdom about life and the passage from one generation to the next...

Next week: #55-51...

2020 Drags On With All Its Problems, As a Patriot Passes On

Late this morning I watched on TV as the horse-drawn caisson carrying John Lewis' flag-wrapped casket crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama for his last crossing at the place where in March, 1965, he suffered a fractured skull at the hands of state troopers attacking the peaceful demonstration march for civil rights as they were making their way to Montgomery, the state capital.  Only this past March, Lewis, a longtime U.S. representative for Atlanta, had walked over the bridge with several congressional colleagues...he seemed strong and fit although he knew then he was suffering from pancreatic cancer.  That was less than five months ago...wow, it seems like this year time has come to almost a grinding halt.  I remember "long, long ago" on February 16 stepping off our Caribbean cruise ship with Melissa at Port Everglades, with the coronavirus a concern for the U.S. west coast...who would have guessed how it would explode in scope, first in Europe and then New York and the rest of the country, during the ensuing weeks.  And the murder of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, preceded a few days by the killing of Ahmaud Armery in Brunswick while out jogging, and followed by weeks of nationwide protests that have yet to subside, seems to have happened so very long ago.  I liked John Lewis and am saddened at his passing...he was a brave, principled man and a patriot in the highest sense of the word.  But those protest marches he undertook with others like Martin Luther King, Jr. during those bygone years were deliberately and steadfastly peaceful...the violence which happened was perpetrated on them, not by them.  Sadly, I'm now seeing what generally started out as a peaceful, legitimate protest movement against police abuse degenerating into street violence, vandalism of public and private property, and an Orwellian type of attitude pushed about political correctness...not a good direction to go.  Unfortunately, I also see no light at the end of the tunnel for any of this...I guess I should at least be happy that live pro sports is finally coming back (at least for the time being)...

Fauci, Nicknames, and Washington

I was at work Thursday evening when, just before the 2020 Major League Baseball televised debut game between the New York Yankees and the Nationals in Washington, DC, pandemic guru Dr. Anthony Fauci threw out the ceremonial first pitch.  I did hear the funny reactions on sports talk radio, prompting me to later check it out.  The good doctor strode up confidently to the mound...and then proceeded to hurl a zinger about 10-15 feet to the left of the waiting catcher.  Not as bad as the radio jocks sounded...I was impressed that Fauci could even throw that far, to be perfectly honest.  Once I had a much worse throw...I was standing nearby a softball game one afternoon while in the sixth grade at Nova Elementary and a stray ball came rolling my way. I scooped it up and then helpfully heaved it back with all my might...only the ball didn't go back, but rather at a 90 degree angle to the left, straight at the school building: it was a very embarrassing run for me to retrieve it, sigh...

Speaking of Washington and sports, the report is out now that the city's National Football League franchise, after finally dumping its moniker "Redskins" following years of harsh criticism, will be moving forward this season as "The Washington Football Team".  And why not, since in soccer you already have teams like "Los Angeles Football Club" and "New York City Football Club".  Personally, I searched myself to come up with appropriate nickname replacements, producing results like "Big Fat Buildings", "Mall", "Museums", "Metro", "Bureaucrats", "Tourists", "Lobbyists"...you see, I visited there a couple of years ago.  But after giving it all due thought, my final suggestion has to be the Washington Jelly Beans, in honor of our late former president Ronald Reagan's penchant for the candy...that should help to soothe all the conservatives miffed at the dumping of "Redskins".  And besides, everybody likes jelly beans, right?  Okay I get it, never gonna happen...

Quote of the Week...from Isaac Asimov

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.                                                        ---Isaac Asimov

I'm not sure when Isaac Asimov penned the above quote, but I do know that he died in 1992...28 years ago.  And yet today, with science denial running rampant in our society on a number of fronts, it couldn't ring truer.  We have so much information now at our nearly instant disposal, and it's portable: you can carry and access it on your smartphone anywhere you go...yet I don't think that people are any more knowledgeable about the issues that affect them and our country this election season than they were when there was no such thing as the Internet.  With this very recent innovation connecting the world over, are people kinder and more gracious and empathetic toward one another than before?  Doesn't seem so to me, looks like many of us are stubbornly digging ourselves deeply in our preconceived mindsets and closing up to anything that might challenge them...no, our "wisdom" is definitely not keeping up with the science.  I wonder what Asimov, were he alive today (he'd be 100), would think about the nonsense going on around us and the way people rationalize their own behavior in the face of facts to the contrary.  I'm guessing that he wouldn't be surprised, not one little bit...

Sports Talk Radio and Television Continue to Ignore Actual Sports

It's been fun the last few days to once again being able to watch live, American major league sports games that matter...I'm referring, of course to Major League Soccer and its group stage of matches in this improvised 2020 pandemic season.  Of course, were you listening to sports talk radio or TV you may not even be aware of the fact of soccer's resumption since they tend to obsess about football and basketball...with just a pinch of baseball thrown in.  And the media sports blabbers aren't really into these sports per se, but rather analyzing with an often overbearing attitude of political correctness what various players, owners and members of management are Tweeting or saying and focusing on their respective conflicts and offenses.  The complete repudiation of professional soccer as a topic of discussion is most likely based on the various announcers' ignorance and lack of interest in it, but you would think that a network like ESPN, which is actually broadcasting MLS matches live, would encourage its own people to bring it up on theirs shows...if only briefly.  Today Major League Baseball will open its own curtailed season and I still expect, in the midst of it all, my local sports radio talk stations to continue their obsession with besieged National Football League Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, as if this were the only "sports" topic worth discussing besides what messages different players will be "sporting" on their jerseys.  In a few days basketball and hockey will resume as well...forget about the latter ever getting any sort of mention.  At least they're actually going to be showing the soccer, hockey and baseball, regardless of the amount of attention they will be receiving from the so-called sports talk "professionals" who are supposed to be knowledgeable about them and who, one might think, would have a vested interest in promoting public enthusiasm about these sports...

Weekly Short Stories: 1961 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here are my review of the next four tales appearing in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 23 (1961). One's a mystery, one's a satire, one's a "short-short", and one's a love story of sorts: nice mix...

HIDING PLACE by Poul Anderson
In interstellar space, a spaceship owned and staffed by an eccentric wealthy entrepreneur is racing to avoid being nabbed by brutal space pirates.  They hone in on an alien ship and occupy it, only to find that all the life forms...including the intelligent beings who run that ship...are in cages as it seems to be a zoo of sorts.  The human occupiers desperately need those beings' cooperation to be able to run this ship and escape the pursuing pirates, but how can they distinguish them from the other life forms they are hiding among?  It's a mystery worthy of a Sherlock Holmes tale, and Anderson adds color to the story with the characters' salty language and behavior...nothing like mixing metaphors...

WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE? by Isaac Asimov
The story behind this humor piece is that back in '61 Playboy ran an article deriding modern science fiction as being a lot of campy, lurid tales unworthy of readership.  Asimov turned the tables on the popular men's magazine with a story involving aliens abducting to their spaceship an unrelated couple standing in the New York subway, trying to coax them into mating...only the aliens are really clueless as to what actually constitutes mating among animals from Earth.  Surprisingly, I thought the story was funny, too...

A PRIZE FOR EDIE by J.F. Bone
This was a very short story about someone named "C. Edie" being awarded the Noble Prize after being credited as the responsible party for discovering the cure for cancer.  But who is C. Edie...the answer made me groan with dismay, but then I realized that this story came out before all those subsequent others from shows like Twilight Zone, Star Trek and The Prisoner with episodes treating the same subject.  Nowadays you read A Prize for Edie and say to yourself "So what?"...

THE SHIP WHO SANG by Anne McCaffrey
This provocative story is a forum on how to treat the severely disabled from birth and offers a science fiction solution: from infancy have them adapted to pilot and run spaceships...from the inside, with their neural networks tied into the ships' systems.  Helva was one such child, now grown...deformed beyond any ability to function independently and now only with memories of her altered, destined role.  She selects her partner for their ship: a young man who shares her love of music...and the adventures ensue.  The dilemma here is that humans like Helva are altered and adapted long before they are of an age to consent or dissent, but waiting that long in her life would be impossible. In today's world of robotics and advanced prosthetics, I wonder whether anyone could have written this story.  McCaffrey would expand it into a full novel with the same title, published in 1969...

Next week I continue with this anthology of selected science fiction short stories from 1961...

Managed to See Comet NEOWISE Sunday Evening

Sunday at twilight I dragged a folding chair across my backyard, bringing with me a cup of coffee, and then sat there as the blueness gradually receded and the darkness began to reveal one star after another.  My purpose in this venture was to catch a glimpse of Comet NEOWISE, only discovered less than four months ago, and which is visible to the naked eye...if you're at the correct latitude, that is, and clouds aren't obscuring the sky.  Sunday it was wonderfully clear and I first noticed the star Arcturus high in the sky, followed by Vega in the east, the north star Polaris, and the stars of the Big Dipper, a popular asterism within the constellation Ursa Major...in which Comet NEOWISE was to be located on its western side.  As the sky darkened and more stars became visible, I was frustrated at not being able to make out the comet.  Melissa then came outside and joined me in looking for it...she found it first and eventually so did I, around 9:30 pm.  The Big Dipper was turned on its side in the northwestern sky with the pan in the bottom and the handle on top.  I went down from the Dipper about halfway to the horizon, and a little to the left...and there it was, a faint smudge in the sky trailing off to the upper right: I could see it better if I looked a little to the side, not directly at it.  Okay, good, I saw it in person...and frankly, noting how the summer skies here in northern Florida tend to get overcast lately in early evening and that I'm going to be indoors at work this time of the day until next Saturday, this may have been my final opportunity to view it...glad I did.  I first heard of this comet on a Tweet by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, whom I follow, and then kept up with it through some posts by Julie, a Facebook friend.  A few days ago it was in the constellation Auriga, then drifted eastward to Lynx and is now in that far western section of Ursa Major: its position among the starry background changes due to the comet's own motion as well as the Earth's revolution around the Sun.   By the way, the reason the name is in all capital letters is that the discovery came about under a project (NEOWISE) using the space telescope WISE, which stands for Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer...at least that's what Wikipedia said...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #65-61

Here are my reactions to the next five songs on my 500 all-time favorites list.  You probably know two of them very well and never heard of the other three...why not give them all a listen, you never know: one or two of them might eventually find their way onto your own "list"...

65 STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN by Led Zeppelin
Stairway to Heaven, which was released in November, 1971 along with the rest of the band's untitled fourth album, was being heavily played on my favorite Miami rock station in October, 1973 when I underwent my only open surgery to date at age 17...a hernia correction.  I remember a lot about that Hollywood Memorial Hospital experience: maybe too much, and it did little to improve my opinion of human nature...I think I might write about that some other time.  But I was able to listen to the radio during my stay and loved hearing this fantastic song.  My favorite part, aside from the instrumental acoustic guitar/flute opening fanfare, is singer Robert Plant's line "There's a feeling I get when I turn to the west and my spirit is crying for leaving"...

64 RED BARCHETTA by Rush
Back in 1993 we in Gainesville were blessed with a great alternative rock station on 97.7...late Saturday nights they had a show called "Saturday Night Six-Pack" on which they'd play six complete CDs one-by-one, on into the early morning hours.  This is how I was introduced to the Canadian band Rush's 1981 masterpiece Moving Pictures, on which Red Barchetta is the second track.  Great guitar riffs by Alex Lifeson accompany drummer Neil Peart's compelling lyrics...sung by Geddy Lee...about his youth experience driving his uncle's antique Italian sports car in the countryside at breathtaking speed. Peart, both a terrific drummer and songwriter, sadly passed away this past January, I'll miss him...

63 UNDER PRESSURE by Queen with David Bowie
Also sadly, neither David Bowie nor Queen front man Freddie Mercury are with us any longer, but this collaboration from 1981 was special...the video contained classic silent screen film clips.  And the background bass beat was shamelessly exploited by dubious rapper Vanilla Ice, which more than anything probably made the original more popular.  Under Pressure's lyrics are great...such as "Turned away from it all like a blind man, sat on a fence but it don't work, keep coming up with love but it's so slashed and torn".  Yeah, that pretty much expressed how I felt about it all.  This was a song that I ignored when it first came out but which grew on me over the decades...

62 IN LIMBO by Radiohead
One of the most mind-blowing pieces produced by a band already widely acknowledged for its creativity and innovation in the studio, In Limbo is from Radiohead's terrific 2000 album Kid A...with another track from it ranked even higher up on my list of all-time favorites.  It's a drifting, very dreamy and sometimes jazzy mood piece that bears little comparison to anything else I've heard.  And the lyrics are a haunting jump down the rabbit hole: "I'm on your side, nowhere to hide, trap doors that open...I spiral down".  Beats anything I ever heard from the sixties' psychedelic era.  Sometimes In Limbo is played together with its preceding track, Optimistic, another great song...

61 TREAT by Kasabian
The British alternative rock group Kasabian's 2015 album 48:13...named after its duration...was generally a disappointment to me, especially in comparison to their first four albums.  But one track, the 8-minute Treat, stood out and would became my 2015 "song of the year".  I still like it a lot...it has that old Beatles kick to it with a little Led Zeppelin/Jimmy Page kind of guitar riff thrown in for good measure.  And on top of that, it sounds pretty danceable...if you're into that type of thing, which I'm not. Unfortunately, I recently discovered that the band just fired their lead singer Tom Meighan, who got into hot water over a domestic assault against his fiancée.  I felt a bit betrayed by Meighan upon hearing that because I'd become a big fan of his singing and the band as a whole.  But Treat is still great...

Next week: #60-56...

Just Finished Reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Marcus Zusak's 2005 novel The Book Thief is one title I found myself repeatedly coming across as I recently surveyed the Internet for recommended fictional books...so I naturally checked it out from my library and read it.  It's set during the Hitler era during the late 1930s and early 1940s as Liesel
Meminger is a little girl who grows up in the midst of all the turmoil, persecution and tragedy under that heinous regime.  Death himself narrates the story and does a pretty good job...here he doesn't cause death but always promptly arrives to gently gather up the souls of the newly deceased, reminding me somewhat of how J.K. Rowling portrayed him in the book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which came out in '07.  Liesel's father, a communist, has disappeared, presumably snatched and killed by the Nazis, while her mother plans to take her to friends to foster-care her and her little brother as she expects to soon be arrested as well...but little brother dies on the train and little Liesel is left alone, presented to Hans and Rosa Hubermann in a modest home in a Munich suburb.  Her new "parents" are loving, each in their own way, and Liesel gradually adapts to life in her new home.  Starting with that ill-fated train ride, she has begun to snatch books...usually at random...from various sources even though at the start she is unable to read.  But Hans, and later others, will teach her and she becomes quite a reader.  I'm a little hesitant about going any further in describing the plot and characters because I'd like you to read The Book Thief for yourself and provide some feedback on it.  It's a very sobering look at how Jews were persecuted and killed under Hitler's brief (but still much too long) reign, as well as how the German people in different ways responded to the pressures and sacrifices placed upon them.  I became quite attached to the various characters...Zusak was excellent in developing them, making the book seem very real.  I'm not surprised by this novel's popularity...oh, it was made into a movie in 2013, although I'm not sure I want to see it: sometimes the visual images from the big screen displace what my own imagination conjured up while reading a story, and that's a loss...

On the Day of John Lewis' Passing, Georgia Governor and Mayors Need to Negotiate

On this day in which the great civil rights advocate and long-time Atlanta congressman John Lewis died after a seven-month struggle against pancreatic cancer, his home state of Georgia...where I was born...is in the thick of a legal and political struggle concerning how the COVID-19 pandemic is handled there.  The governor, Brian Kemp, has proclaimed a statewide mandate that opens businesses and encourages (but doesn't require) masks in public settings...the recent sharp resurgence in cases has caused several local mayors to enact public face covering mandates in violation of Kemp's rule.  And now he is suing the mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, to rescind that locality's law.  The Georgia governor has been thoroughly trashed in the media for this policy of his in the middle of a public health emergency, but I think he has a point that most media pundits have conveniently chosen to overlook.  You see, these cities that are mandating masks are also considering shutting down their businesses again, like what happened earlier this spring across the country.  Kemp is making it clear in his speeches that he is determined to keep Georgia's economy running and feels that the mayors choosing to defy his policy about masks will...if not checked...then proceed to once again close their city's businesses.  This is what totally frustrates me about this political wrangling: many people at-large automatically associate mask wearing with economic shutdown while in actual policy the former, if universally practiced, will enable businesses to flourish at close to maximal capacity.  Governor Kemp wants Georgians to wear masks but he does not want his state to go into an economic depression with mass-ordered shutdowns...it seems that there should be room for negotiation here: grant the mayors and counties the right to impose and enforce mask mandates while they agree that they will not close down businesses.  Georgia businesses staying open and everybody wearing masks isn't going to make a lot of people happy but it's the obvious solution to this standoff...

Quote of the Week...from Pelé

Success is no accident.  It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.                       ---Pelé

Pelé, from Brazil, is one of the greatest...and most beloved...soccer players in history.  His above quote not only accurately describes his own approach to the game he excelled in, but goes beyond it to apply to me in any challenging area of my life for which I want to achieve success.  The truth is that it's easy to get excited and motivated when starting new projects, and equally easy to coast on successful outcomes.  But when the going is rough, when I am discouraged, anxious or distracted and cannot enjoy or even envision my direction and progress properly, this is precisely when it is important to work, persevere, and sacrifice...to get through those hard times and back on the positive side.  Most people give up in those dark times, but the ones who ultimately succeed and become skillful and accomplished in their chosen areas are the ones who are always working to take things to a higher level, with an ultimate prize envisioned ahead of them.  Above everything, though, as the great Pelé concluded, it is crucial to love what I'm doing or learning to do...beyond what society may say about my current level of competency.  I think a lot of people are hesitant to try anything new for fear of failing before others...it's important that one's interest in an area surmounts that resistance.  As the Desiderata stated, "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself".  It's always been my experience, no matter what I do and how hard I work at it, that somebody will inevitably come along who exceeds my skill and accomplishment, often taking great pains to inform me of this.  So you gotta love what you're doing for its own sake and don't get hung up by the noise coming from others...

Tuberville Defeats Sessions in Alabama: Should Conservatives Rejoice?

Tommy Tuberville defeated Jeff Sessions in this past Tuesday's Alabama primary for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Democrat Doug Jones.  It marked the final nail in the political coffin of Sessions, a long-time popular conservative senator for that state before he avidly supported Donald Trump in their 2016 presidential primary and was later rewarded with the post of Attorney General in the new administration.  Because Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, Trump never forgave him and often publicly berated this crucial campaign supporter before he was finally pushed out of office.  Seeking his old Senate seat, which Jones had won in a 2017 special election upset in this strongly red state, Sessions was thwarted by Trump's hearty endorsement of former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, who has consistently led in the polls over both Sessions and Jones.  So in all likelihood, next January we'll see that seat return to the Republican side...but if you're a conservative you shouldn't be rejoicing...

Jeff Sessions to me was the great, articulate spokesman in the United States Senate for the conservative positions on the various issues coming before it.  Ever since C-Span2 began live floor coverage of this body nearly twenty years ago, I enjoyed watching him get on the floor with his polite, soft-spoken demeaner and then proceed to thoroughly thrash in the most civilized way the other side's arguments, and he was a powerful voice on the Judiciary Committee...conservatives should mourn that he won't get a chance to return.  Instead we have a good ol' boy political neophyte who is totally in the pocket of the current president and won't express a single independent thought that doesn't have the White House's seal of approval stamped on it preapproved.  The only problem with this is that as things now stand, Trump's probably going down in November and we'll have a Democrat as president two weeks after Tuberville gets sworn in.  And poor old Tommy will be standing there all alone without anybody besides the typical radio and TV hacks to tell him what to say...that's what I mean when I said conservatives shouldn't be rejoicing: Jeff Sessions would surely know what to say and how to say it.  I was sadly shocked in '16 to seem him so whole-heartedly supporting and campaigning for Trump in Alabama when that primary campaign was still up in the air and Ted Cruz, a true, consistently conservative standard-bearer, had performed so well on the trail.  Cruz was Sessions' natural choice but he instead made a political mistake that later came to haunt him, and he's paying for it now...maybe FoxNews will hire him on as a political analyst, though.  I often disagreed with Jeff Sessions' opinions as a senator and some of his actions as Attorney General, but felt that he was treated very disrespectfully during the Senate hearing for his confirmation as well as by Trump when the President decided he was no longer useful to him and openly turned against him, a pattern that this individual has repeated with many, many others...

Weekly Short Stories: 1961 Science Fiction, Part 1

I begin my look at science fiction short stories from the year 1961 with the opening two tales from the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 23 (1961).  Just two stories here because they're both pretty long and each one gets a high recommendation from me to read.  In 1961 my family spent its first full year at our new home in the brand-new Boulevard Heights subdivision in West Hollywood, Florida.  I was four going on five...my sister Anita, four years older than me, went to Boulevard Heights Elementary School, which was a couple of blocks from our house.  I had my neighborhood friends Danny and Stevie and Jimmy I hung out with back then.  But enough of the personal stuff: here are my reactions to those stories...

THE HIGHEST TREASON by Randall Garrett
I was impressed by this story the first time I read it a few years ago, and still am after going through it again.  Set in a future interstellar space war between Earth, its colonies and outposts, and an alien humanoid militaristic society, an Earth military officer decides to desert his decadent, weak and complacent homeland to join the Kerothi as they are steadily and consistently winning the war.  His motivations at first seem despicable...but as the story goes on and especially at the end, the plan is entirely different.  Let's just say that some alternate histories of Judas and Jesus paint the former, almost always portrayed as the worst of all traitors, in a more sympathetic light.  The meaning of personal sacrifice in the pursuit of the greater good is the overriding theme here...

HOTHOUSE by Brian Aldiss
Aldiss meticulously created a scenario far off into Earth's future, billions of years from now, when the Sun is dying and the Earth always keeps one face to it while the moon is fixed sharing Earth's orbit.  Plants have taken over the biosphere and only five species of animals remain: humans and four insect forms.  The story takes place in a banyan forest (one giant banyan tree on the planet remains) as the various carnivorous plants prey on the small tribe of remaining humans, who struggle to survive until the next generation against the heavy odds stacked against them.  This story you probably want to take slowly and sit back from time to time, close your eyes, and visualize the environment and strange creatures the author imagined.  At first glance, Hothouse is a bleak look into the future, but upon reflection I have to admit that for a species such as our own which has only been around for less than a half million years, projecting its survival for another two billion years is actually a pretty doggone optimistic assessment.  The ending is fantastic...begging for a sequel...and uses cosmic radiation, plus the fact that it was early plant life on Earth that originally permeated its atmosphere with oxygen...

Next week: more science fiction short stories from 1961...

Constellation of the Month: Scorpius (the Scorpion)

If you happen to be a follower of that nonscientific field of soothsaying known as astrology, you already know that Scorpio is a sign of the Zodiac, representing people born October 23-November 21...guess what, I think horoscopes are a lot of hooey.  Astronomically speaking, I learned about the celestial Zodiac constellation Scorpius early in life at the age of seven...I remember that late spring night 56 years ago when I got permission to stay up late enough to watch it rise in the southeastern sky, leading with the scorpion's claws (three stars) followed by its highlight, the bright red giant star Antares.  In the United States Scorpius passes low in the southern sky during summer evenings and actually does resemble a scorpion when you connect together the dots (its stars, that is).  It also lies on the elliptic, meaning that our sun, moon, and the planets are seen from our vantage point on Earth to travel through it (and the other 11 Zodiac constellations).  Now to call Scorpius a "July" constellation only means that round 9-10 pm in the evening of that month it crosses the meridian (the imaginary line in the sky that divides east from west).  I could technically call just about any of the 88 official constellations as belonging to July since they all likewise cross that meridian line, most of them at other times of the day or night, however.  So for convention's sake I do as others do and take a mental snapshot of the sky at mid-evening during a particular month...

Although Scorpius is traditionally represented by that scorpion pattern from its brightest visible stars, the constellation is actually a sector of space projected outward from Earth to the farthest regions of the universe, comprising untold numbers of galaxies.  There are four Messier "objects" with Scorpius, all star clusters.  Scorpius lies the furthest south of all the Zodiac constellations, passing low in continental American skies.  It's usually a lot easier to notice the three prominent "claw" stars at the constellation's western end, followed by spectacular Antares.  The upper two claw stars are Graffius and Dschubba, respectively.  Other notable stars in Scorpius are Sargas in its tail and Shaula at the tip where the "stinger" is...

I have a memory from childhood of being with my family at the Golden Glades Drive-In theatre in northern Dade County, between Opa-Locka and Carol City near the Palmetto Expressway.  We were walking outside and I happened to look up toward the south and saw Scorpius in its completeness...it's one of the more spectacular constellations in the sky, definitely the highlight of the summer season...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #70-66

Once again I dip way back into the distant past with the next five songs on my list of all-time favorites: four are from 1964 to 1970 and the "new" one is from 1983...37 years ago.  Don't worry, some considerably more recent songs also appear on my list down the line: you might have even heard some of them before...

70 TWIST AND SHOUT...the Beatles
Back in early 1964 after the Beatles made their triumphal entry to the United States with their Ed Sullivan appearance and tour, at one time enjoying the top five singles hits (never happened before or since), we went together as a family to W.T. Grant in Hollywood on US 441 to look for Beatles records, among other things.  One of the items purchased was the single Twist and Shout...one of those aforementioned top five hits...with the flip side being There Is a Place.  I was a little seven-year old kid at the time and loved Twist and Shout, especially John Lennon's hoarse screaming and the "aah-aah-aah" harmonizing.  I still think it's an amazing song, recorded back when the Beatles covered a lot of other artists' material, this one originally by the Isley Brothers.  Word has it that on the day they recorded all of the tracks on their debut album they saved Twist and Shout to the very last, knowing that John wouldn't have a voice left after it was over...

69 IN A BIG COUNTRY...Big Country
In the fall of 1983 this was a big MTV video hit, although I greatly preferred the music by itself.  Big Country was a Scottish rock band with the uncanny ability to emulate the bagpipe sound on electric guitar.  I would eventually crown In a Big Country as my song of that year...ironically, although it was the band's signature hit with their own name in the title, Big Country would steadfastly refuse to play it for the crowds during their concerts...which might partially explain why you haven't heard much else from them.  In a Big Country is a positive, energizing song that makes me want pump my fists in the air and believe anything's possible...

68 FEARLESS...Pink Floyd
Although Fearless is a track from Pink Floyd's 1970 Meddle album, I didn't first hear this song until more than twenty years later when I started exploring their backlog of works.  Fearless is a curious mishmash of positivity, political satire, and the Liverpool-based band's adoration of their local soccer team as expressed by traditional stadium chants.  Climbing the mountain is a strong theme in this song...both literally and figuratively, and the instrumental breaks with the background sports chants provide an eerie effect...definitely a one-of-a-kind song, better in my opinion than anything they produced on their following landmark Dark Side of the Moon album...

67 THE LITTLE BLACK EGG...the Night Crawlers
This song was a local hit in South Florida during 1967, it's a Floridian band and yes, the words are a little weird...but I loved it anyway.  We must have had a radio with us on our nightly family dog walks around the neighborhood, because The Little Black Egg transports me back to that time and place, when our little cockapoo Michelle pranced up and down the streets with us while all the stray dogs in the vicinity would escort us along in a most friendly manner...yes, back then dogs ran loose like cats do and were mostly pretty sociable.  Looking back on my life, 1967 was a rather strange year...maybe I'll get into that a bit should I write down my memories down the line on this blog...

66 NO SUGAR TONIGHT/NEW MOTHER NATURE...the Guess Who
This Canadian band sadly had a name too much like England's The Who...they should have come up with something a little more distinct, although their music was very creative and original.  In the years following the 1970 release of American Woman, on which this two-part track appears, I grew to greatly like it when it became an album rock radio staple.  I originally preferred the first part, No Sugar Tonight, which then morphed into New Mother Nature...that part, I think, required a more cultivated taste.  Ultimately these two seemingly clashing sections are brought together in the concluding verse when they're played and sung concurrently: brilliant...

Next week: #65-61...

Visited Local Gym for a Hot Summer Day Treadmill Distance Run

It's been several months since I've visited my local gym, which happens to be Gainesville Health and Fitness.  I was planning to try out a long training run this weekend around the neighborhood but the temperature was too high...and since GHF has been opened back up I decided to give it a try as it got up to 94 degrees with a three-digit heat index.  I got there at one this afternoon and was a little taken aback about how busy it was, although upon reflection the parking lot was a lot emptier and there were fewer people there.  Their website discouraged members from using the locker rooms in the interest of safety from the coronavirus...I had already figured that out and don't plan to use them until the pandemic has subsided.  Wearing a mask upon entry and exit as asked (and all the employees wear masks), I scanned my membership card on a machine they had installed on the counter, to reduce any proximity to workers holding scanners.  Once in, I went upstairs to the row of treadmills I was accustomed to using, surprised that none had been roped off...they stated that members needed to work out six feet apart and I suppose they just expected us to abide by it: fortunately, everyone there seemed considerate of each other.  On the cardio equipment like the treadmill, users removed their masks but I noticed that those training with weights tended to keep them on.  My treadmill worked great and I was able to slog out eight slow miles on it while listening to a shuffle of some of my favorite songs on my MP3 player.  Afterwards I just walked out and back to my car and drove home...a successful venture.  But I still didn't like that many people there and know there are better times to visit when it's emptier.  The staff there was very friendly and professional as usual, and naturally were taking extra steps to keep the equipment clean and disinfected.  I don't know what it's going to look like there, however, when the University of Florida students pour back into town in a few weeks...heck, I don't know what it's going to look like anywhere, for that matter...

Just Finished Reading Hamlet by William Shakespeare

The other day I checked out, from my local public library's online source Libby, an audiobook version of William Shakespeare's longest play, the tragedy Hamlet.  The version I listened to was by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and was pretty powerful, even though they stuck to the original archaic language...which was a great mental exercise in concentration and listening as I struggled to follow it.  Still, I somehow managed to keep up with the story's general flow as the fictional Danish Prince Hamlet, distraught over his father's recent death, discovers from his ghost its true cause...which leads him down a path of vengeance and disaster.  Hamlet, the Ghost, Horatio, Ophelia, Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Laertes, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern...quite an unforgettable list of characters as well as memorable lines, plot twists, and that ending: ouch!  I liked hearing the play instead of visually reading it, but unfortunately since I wasn't actually watching a stage play in the way it is supposed to be experienced I was often confused as to which character was doing the speaking...and the climactic duel scene was pretty much indecipherable just listening to it, necessitating some reference to the written script, available free online: here's a link to the Gutenberg site: [Gutenberg Hamlet].  I'm not yet finished with Hamlet: I'd like to see some film versions, the 1948 Lawrence Olivier movie being the most celebrated one...although I understand it considerably altered Shakespeare's written play.  Libby offers some other plays of Shakespeare on audio, and I'd like to try them out as well.  I had a lot of fun with Hamlet, something that greatly surprised me.  Back at Nova High I had a classmate named Frances who was crazy about Shakespeare...I'm beginning to see why.  I suggest that if you're having trouble reading a play of his, try like I did and see how much you can follow on audio, or find a quality stage presentation to watch...sometimes you can pick up some good stuff from YouTube, and then there are the modern language versions on the market as well...

Quote of the Week...from William Shakespeare

This above all: to thine own self be true.      
                                    ---Polonius to his son Laertes, from William Shakespeare's Hamlet

Be true to yourself would be the commonly used modern-day version of this famous line...never before is it more important and applicable to people's lives.  In the beginning of the Shakespearian play Hamlet, the Danish usurper King Claudius' advisor Polonius is bidding farewell to his son Laertes, who is going off to study at Paris...and runs off a list of maxims designed to remind him how to behave around others while abroad.  This line seems to have stuck the most over the ensuing centuries, and why not: it is crucial that we stay true to our own conscience and respect our own ability to perceive and process information to the logical conclusions that they lead to instead of simply bending with the social and political winds around us and subverting our own integrity to the whims of others.  If others are espousing a narrative that I believe is either too narrow or false, then it does me no good to go on social media or in person and deliver my differences...they'd sooner die than to admit they were wrong and would only treat me as an enemy.  So I look around me, on social media and on television and see different narratives being pushed about different issues...one of these carries the mantras "necessary conversation" and "silence isn't an option" while its adherents ostracize and condemn anyone brazen enough to diverge from its politically correct line.  I see the essence of this particular narrative's main argument as being legitimate...although incomplete...but bringing up a bigger picture that puts it into a broader perspective would doubtless peg me as "tone deaf" and "insensitive" as I have seen done to others.  Seeing the risks involved in delving into this issue right now, I'll bide my time until heads around me are clearer...if that ever happens.  But I will in the meantime be true to myself and refrain from saying a lot of claptrap that sounds good but carries little meaning...

As for Shakespeare, I'm "reading" Hamlet right now...or more precisely, listening to an audio recording of a performance of it.  Although Shakespeare's plays are a standard staple in high school English class reading assignments, they are meant to be watched and listened to as the actors bring to life the often archaic language of four centuries ago.  I plan to watch as many of his works as possible in the next few months, and of course I'll be reporting about my reactions on this blog...

Starbucks, Masks, and Narratives

Back on June 28th I wrote about sitting in my nearby Starbucks and enjoying the resumption of an old tradition of mine, sipping on an iced coffee with my laptop and writing and studying.  At the time I wondered whether, with this resurgence of the coronavirus in my home state of Florida and others in the country, Starbucks might close its indoors areas again.  But I've been in here a number of times since and have always found the dining room relatively empty with no trouble finding a "distant" place to sit.  Although it's acceptable to take off my mask once I'm seated, I find it more comfortable to keep it on and momentarily lift it while taking a sip...I've noticed some other fellow customers likewise keeping theirs on as well.  One day a young couple that had been sitting across the store from me without masks (which was fine with me) turned toward me as they were walking out with bug-eyed, hostile stares...no doubt directed at me for wearing a mask: they were complete strangers and I was doing nothing to them, yet they felt somehow justified at throwing civility out the window over this one issue. I keep seeing Facebook posts by deniers who act offended if others expect them to wear a mask around them and who NEVER acknowledge that their usefulness is not so much to protect themselves from others but rather to protect others from themselves.  These people have doubtless heard this point repeatedly but simply refuse to receive it because it doesn't fit their bias and narrative. So instead they keep pushing this bogus "it's my body and I'll do what I want with it" victim-complex argument which avoids the fact that they are in truth demonstrating callous disregard for the health of others around them.  But I've discovered a major truth, which is that once people get a particular narrative stuck in their brains, then no amount of facts, logic, or mitigating input will ever convince them to either dispose of it or even to expand upon it a little: they'll accept information, no matter how spurious, that props it up...and either reject or ignore anything broadening or contradicting it...

Weekly Short Stories: 1960 Science Fiction, Part 3

Here I conclude my look at science fiction short stories from 1960 as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 22 (1960).  Two were very brief and two were pretty long...I preferred the former although the longer ones did each make me reflect a little on the nature of our reality.  Here are my reactions to these four stories...

CHIEF by Henry Slesar
In this very short tale, a party of "whites" following a nuclear war land on a isolated, primitive society's shores, hopeful that here they can escape the dire effects of the holocaust...as well as impress the native population with their "superiority", as expressed by the strange machine they display that emits many clicking sounds when held up to themselves. (but not the natives).  You just know this tactic is going to backfire, but the last sentence makes it all worth reading anyway...

MIND PARTNER by Christopher Anvil
This is one of those stories that play with the reader's sense of what is real and what isn't...at its conclusion I still wasn't clear.  There is a new drug floating around that gives makes its users strongly dependent...but the addiction isn't for new heightened experiences but rather to forget them.  Intrigued?  A man is hired to infiltrate the gang pushing the drug from their mansion...and right off the bat the illusions ensue.  Hold onto your hat with this story: it's quite a ride...

THE HANDLER by Damon Knight
The Handler is also very short, but like Chief its message packs a big punch...and in today's world of shallow, narcissistic celebrities and politicians that millions idolize it is also very relevant.  One of those shallow celebrities has just finished a performance and is backstage congratulating the various people responsible for propping him up...and everyone around thinks he is the greatest.  Then he mentions his Handler...and the absurdity begins.  The message here is that even when people know someone is a complete phony, they'll still uncritically hinge on every word he or she says: you don't have to look very far on the news or Twitter to see this...

THE VOICES OF TIME by J.G. Ballard
Powers is a research neurologist in the not-too-distant future...life is running down, with terminal sleeping comas increasingly affecting the population: his own waking hours are dwindling down as the days rush by and he tries to finish his business before the end.  An associate leads him to the underlying reason for the sped-up entropy pervading the world: the entire universe is dying, and much quickly than ever thought.  In a story where there's not much to be done, instead the author lays it out differently, creating a mood piece that accentuates the hopelessness and resignation.  It makes reading it more challenging, and I'm not sure it couldn't have been just as effective if written in a more plain style...but that's just my opinion for what it's worth...

Next week I begin my look back at the year 1961 in short science fiction...

Just Finished Reading The Pearl by John Steinbeck

It was either late 1970 or early 1971 when my ninth grade high school English teacher Mrs. Hagadorn assigned us to read John Steinbeck's 1947 novel The Pearl...I dutifully went down to my school's tiny bookstore at the southwest corner of campus and purchased a copy: it was pretty small and looked like a quick, easy read.  Unfortunately, the story itself was so overwhelmingly negative that I found the reading experience exceedingly unpleasant...to the point where I "studiously" avoided reading anything else by Steinbeck for decades.  Well, after three relatively recent positive reactions to three of his novels...Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and Cannery Row...I decided to take on The Pearl once more to see if the passing years might not have blunted some of my critical attitude about it.  Nope, turns out that I wasn't reading it back then with an immature mind...I found it just as distasteful as before, but nevertheless came out of it all with some reflections...

As in Grapes of Wrath from eight years before, society is depicted in The Pearl as dog-eat-dog and full of bigotry and racially-based class distinction...if you happen to be born into the "wrong" group then you can just forget about getting a fair shake in life.  A poor fisherman living on the Baja Mexico peninsula with his wife and infant makes a paltry income diving for pearls...one day he finds the ultimate prize, a giant beautiful specimen...and foolishly lets the news spread like wildfire.  Because he now possesses "wealth", Kino believes that he will be able to move up the social ladder and partake of the benefits that society offers to those with financial means.  Instead he is despised by his own people, swindled by the doctor and purchasers, and attacked for the pearl...ultimately becoming a hunted outcast.  It's a tragic tale...but which is evil, the pearl or the disease of covetousness infecting all the people who encounter it?  Kino himself gets carried away by his discovery and his dreams of capitalizing on it...ultimately, the "solution" is not to change others but his own attitude about material wealth. But if you're very poor and are struggling just to feed and shelter your own family, you have to grab on to anything that can guarantee at least some semblance of a future, so I was disappointed in how the story ended.  Maybe you'll arrive at a different reaction: The Pearl is "0 for 2" as far as my readings of it are concerned: I'm done with it...with a bit more respect for my old ninth grade ability of discernment...

My 500 All-Time Favorite Songs: #75-71

Here are my reactions to five more songs on my 500 all-time favorites list as it gradually approaches the very best...these here, though, are all "champions" as far as I am concerned...

75 EIGHT MILES HIGH...the Byrds
By early 1966 I already knew of the Byrds from the previous year with their big hits Hey Mister Tambourine Man and Turn Turn Turn that they performed on the Ed Sullivan show and which my local station WQAM would play...still, I kind of felt, even back then in my nine-year old mind, that they seemed too preachy.  But then Eight Miles High came out with its out-of-this-world guitar jamming and spaced-out lyrics and I was pleased to finally come across something of theirs I liked a lot.  Looking back, this was one of the very earliest psychedelic songs to come out, a year before the movement took off with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album and the ensuing Summer of Love.  But although imitators of this genre now sound stale, Eight Miles High is the "real McCoy" and is as fresh today as it was 54 years ago...

74 TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME...Supertramp
This song of personal desolation appropriately was popular at the exact time of my own personal desolation: late in 1979, the worst part of the worst year in my life...sometimes you go through valleys, and then there are trenches.  It's from their wonderful Breakfast in America album and features Roger Hodgson's high-pitched, plaintive lead vocals and a killer harmonica and piano interaction.  The intro and closing to Take the Long Way Home are among the best ever that I've heard, and the lyrics tear at the heart: "When the day comes to settle down, who's to blame if you're not around...you took the long way home"...a truly chilling song...

73 STRANGLEHOLD...Ted Nugent
No, I don't dig Ted Nugent's politics...if others do then good for them, leave me out of it all.  Stranglehold, from 1974, is Nugent's signature masterpiece...although while the guitar magician works numerous wonders on it the lead singer is Derek St. Holmes.  Still, Nugent contributes his own singing as well in the unforgettable line near the end: "Sometimes you want to get higher, and sometimes you gotta start low...some people think they're gonna die someday: I got news, you never got to go".  When Stranglehold first came out I didn't like it...only years later did I learn to appreciate how it built up musically...

72 AMERICA...Simon and Garfunkel
In retrospect, Simon and Garfunkel's 1968 album Bookends to me was their best and one of the greatest in history...although at the time I knew little of it.  It wouldn't be until seven years later that I really took to America, one of its tracks.  The lyrics describe a Greyhound trip a young man and his girlfriend are taking cross-country, my favorite line being "Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces, she said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy.  I said be careful, his bowtie is really a camera". Although it came out years earlier, I closely associate S&G's America with what was going on with my life in late 1975...

71 BE GOOD JOHNNY...Men at Work
Men at Work was a talented Australian band from the early 1980s who came out with funny hits like Who Can It Be Now? and Down Under and even goofier videos to accompany them.  Be Good Johnny was a minor hit between their bigger ones, and although they also hammed it up here both in the song and video, it contained an underlying theme that strongly resonated with me then and still does: we're all different and each of us has a right to our own individuality...and furthermore it's up to each to us to assert that individuality without having to wait for anyone else's permission.  Pretty heady for a group that at the time was often derided as being too shallow.  Be Good Johnny's music was pretty awesome, too...

Next week: #70-66...

Lookin Forward to Resumed Pro Sports...If That Happens

I've enjoyed this Fourth of July weekend, but I'm getting a little tired of listening to sports talk or watching reruns of ancient games as substitutes for watching live major league sporting events.  Sure, there's still premier professional soccer going on in Europe and Mexico, and sometimes that's fun to watch...I got into yesterday's English Premier League match between Chelsea and Watford, peculiar in that although the Chelsea home stadium was empty of fans, they piped in recorded spectator noise to give the audio illusion that it was packed.  But not seeing anyone in the stands doesn't detract in the least from my enjoyment of a game...just bring it on!  On July 8th, America's Major League Soccer is planning to start action with all 26 league teams in a format similar to the World Cup...a few early matches followed by knockout elimination rounds until a champion is crowned.  But whether I follow them or not depends on whether I get to see their matches on TV.  Major League Baseball is supposedly going to begin a much-curtailed, 60-game regular season starting on July 23rd or 24th with games taking place at the various cities' home fields although they, too, will be empty of fans.  The National Basketball Association on July 30th is set to try and close its 2019-2020 season with some 22 teams playing for the final playoff lineup with the playoffs following...while everyone involved plays and resides within an isolation bubble at World Disney World near Orlando: good luck with that.  Similarly, the National Hockey League plans to hold its season-ending playoffs with the teams playing in centralized locations away from their home towns...both basketball and hockey will be playing to empty arenas.  And the National Football League plans to start its 2020 season on September 10th, although the number of scheduled preseason exhibition games has dwindled from four to two...and may be zero before we get there.  And there's no telling what will happen with college football, as decentralized as the sport is with certain conferences and states holding a relatively high degree of decision power here...

I like watching soccer, baseball, basketball, and football when the games count...even ice hockey when it's the Stanley Cup playoffs.  I don't want to see packed stadiums and arenas anytime soon, and some of the reports about different teams' players testing positive for COVID-19 don't sound encouraging.  The recent resurgence of coronavirus in many states...especially Texas, California, Arizona and my Florida...has thrown a monkey wrench into the various plans for reopening the different leagues.  As of now, they're still planning to resume play on the indicated dates, but we all know that things can drastically change over the course of just a few hours...

Just Finished Reading Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

As I continued on my personal tour of some of American writer John Steinbeck's more famous works, I came across his 1945 Cannery Row, a lighter story than his usual deep social commentary.  It's about a street...hence the title...in Monterrey, California, a location intimately known by the author.  Sardine canning companies line it, and other residents live there: Lee Chong, the parsimonious local grocer, community-minded Dora and her brothel, a group of derelict men led by Mack...and then there's Doc, a marine biologist running his own business and who collects and sells samples of the local Pacific fauna from his laboratory there.  It's the interaction between these various characters that dictates the story's flow, highlighted by Mack's desire to do something nice for Doc and the mischief that follows this initial burst of good will.  Mack reminded me with his philosophy of life of Eliza Doolittle's vagrant father in My Fair Lady, the movie adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.  Initially when I read Cannery Row I felt that Steinbeck wrote Doc's character based on himself, but later I discovered that he based it on a friend who also had a biological laboratory there.  There is some drama in the story, but it's mostly a tale about many clearly-flawed, very different individuals bound together within a community by their affection for one another and sense of belonging...and that's not so bad, is it?  I remember back in the early 1980s a Cannery Row movie starring Nick Nolte and Deborah Winger but I never got around to seeing it.  Cannery Row hops from character to character...the temptation is for me to crown Doc as the story's protagonist, but this novel really wasn't constructed that way: it was more a portrayal of this quirky, special town at a snapshot in history.  I thought it was pretty good reading...

Quote of the Week...from Les Brown

 You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.                 ---Les Brown

Les Brown is an American motivational speaker who has appeared in the past on Public Television fundraising drives...that's how I got impressed with his rhetorical skills.  Being in my sixties, I'm not getting any younger but still need to believe in progress and self-improvement.  It's important to look at the future and see possibilities and opportunities for personal advancement and new experiences.  I want to continue to learn foreign languages, learn to play a musical instrument or two (or more), write a book or two (or more), travel a bit, keep up my health even to the point of continuing running races for years to come, and develop my interpersonal communications skills...the area I probably need work on the most.  And I want to do this all while encouraging my wonderful wife Melissa to do likewise with her goals and dreams, the two of us sharing our joys and experiences...the same goes for our children Will and Rebecca as they stake out their respective futures as young adults...

Just Finished Reading The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath is one of those books that I should have been assigned during high school English class...how I missed it is beyond me.  In the ninth grade, I did get assigned The Pearl, another novel by John Steinbeck, one I intensely disliked at the time and which kept me from approaching this great author's other works for many, many years.  But a few years ago I read his Of Mice and Men, a brilliant work, and just now finally tackled what is probably his most famous novel, which came out in 1939 and just the following year was made into a classic movie starring Henry Fonda.  Fonda's character, a young man named Tom Joad, has just been released from prison and is returning home to his family of tenant farmers in rural Oklahoma...only to discover upon arriving that they have had "their" farm seized by the bank after Dust Bowl failures in crop yield had placed them behind in payments.  Many of the Joads' neighbors are likewise pulling up stakes and heading to California, where handbills flooding their area are proclaiming jobs abounding in that state's diverse agricultural community.  It is the ordeal of the Joads...with Tom's blunt, common sense take on the proceedings, that defines this story of greedy exploitation by the wealthy, irrational prejudice by those feeling threatened by the incoming "Okies", and the bonds that develop among the poor families desperately searching for work to feed and shelter themselves.  The Grapes of Wrath is an exposé story of this dark period in our country's history...I haven't yet seen the movie but plan to soon: I've read nothing but good things about it, although I suspect that some of the book's rawness may have been smoothed over for the big screen.  But first I recommend you read the book: Steinbeck makes you feel like you're right there with the Joad family, alternately suffering and rejoicing with them along their troubled journey.  As for other John Steinbeck novels, I'm currently reading his more lighthearted Cannery Row and look forward to East of Eden and a hopefully more mature rereading of The Pearl...

Weekly Short Stories: 1960 Science Fiction, Part 2

Here are four more science fiction short stories from the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 22 (1960).  This paperback anthology series, compiled during the 1980s and early 90s up to Asimov's sad death from kidney failure in 1992, covered the years 1939-63 in the genre.  For 1964 through 1990, I've also collected the ongoing "year's best" science fiction short story series edited by Donald Wollheim...so you see I've got a long way to go just to get to thirty years ago...

MINE OWN WAYS by Richard McKenna
This is a story of allegory, as are many science fiction tales, about how one's own cultural centeredness can cause judgmental conclusions about another society and its norms and laws.  Set on another planet, Earth travelers are repelled by the killing they see within an indigenous humanoid society there...their eyes are opened when the "priest" in charge of the barbaric rituals reveals his true identity and the underlying cause of the "tests" the young initiates are required to perform...with violent death as the penalty for failure.  An interesting theory contained within about the origins of our own humanity...

MAKE MINE...HOMOGENIZED by Rick Raphael
A deliberately funny and satirical take on the arms race, nuclear testing, and genetic manipulation as a hokey ranch woman living near one of those western testing sites discovers one day that one of her cows' milk is high-powered fuel of a kind no one has remotely developed...and that her rooster produces golden eggs with equally strong detonator powder inside.  Of course, the secret gets out and the author has fun describing the reactions not only of the defense bigwigs, press, and politicians, but also of the Soviet Union with its propensity for ridiculous propaganda.  A long story, but enjoyable with a very silly, campy pun stuck at the very end (in our age it would be called a "dad" joke)...

THE LADY WHO SAILED THE SOUL by Cordwainer Smith
Cordwainer Smith was the pen name of Paul Linebarger, a college professor who as his alter ego created a special, unique future history of space exploration...my favorite story of his is The Game of Cat and Dragon from 1954. The Lady Who Sailed The Soul is a sci-fi love story about Cordwainer's imagined space pioneering vision of star-travelers on spaceships powered by vast light-sensitive sails, the passengers in suspended animation and the pilots medically modified to stay always awake with their sense of time passage drastically slowed. On such a voyage to "New Earth" light years distant the pilot perceives that one month has passed but physically ages forty years.  A woman and man, the former about to pilot her first mission and the latter, physically old but mentally still young, have a romantic affair but then part company...and then she embarks on her own piloting assignment on a ship called The Soul.  I liked the story, but preferred others by this author...

I REMEMBER BABYLON by Arthur C. Clarke
Clarke is best know for his 2001: A Space Odyssey movie that he co-created with Stanley Kubrick in 1967 and later wrote a four-part book series about.  In 1945 he predicted the rise of communications satellites stationed in stationary spots around the Earth...twelve years before Sputnik, the first satellite, was ever launched! I Remember Babylon is a semi-fictional essay in which Clarke encounters a man working for America's adversaries...and their new satellites will broadcast unrestricted pornography and violence into American homes 24/7 (to supposedly weaken the population) interspersed with propaganda while our government will be able to do nothing about it.  In 1991, when the anthology's editors picked this "story" for inclusion, they were glad that Clarke's vision didn't come about. Unfortunately, they were clueless about the soon-to-be advent of the Internet, which produced the exact same effect as warned in this story...

Next week I conclude my look back at the year 1960 in short science fiction...